Planning Ahead Life

For me, planning a day in advance is planning ahead—and technically, you see, I’m right about that. But when I wake up one morning and say, I am going to do x and y tomorrow, and then on Tomorrow I only do x or even 0.5x, I can say to myself, “Well, Self, you should have been a better planner and it is your fault that you didn’t accomplish everything, so think about that and do better next time.” And then after my inner Responsible Self nicely chastises my inner Regular Self, I feel better about it, and I can move on with my life. But there are some days when Responsible Self takes over my whole body for a brief moment and plans everything so fast. My Responsible Self is not so chill and laid back as Regular Self. Responsible Self gets really annoyed when her plans don’t work out. This is because she tried so hard and planned so well and still hit zero for three tasks on Monday and only one for three tasks on Wednesday. She feels like the world is falling into pieces around her. If she didn’t have Regular Self’s resilient sense of humor, she would never survive here in South Sudan. Life can be really stressful for her.

This week’s plan was brought to you by Responsible Self, but Regular Self is the one who is making it to the end. Responsible Self started to feel doubts on Monday morning when her scheduled morning run was interrupted by a phone call informing her that they needed to leave at 8 instead of 9 to complete the day’s tasks. Since it was already 7:30 and she was still a mile away from home, she agreed, but knew that the other colleagues would undoubtedly still arrive at 9:00am, as she had asked them specifically to arrive at 8:00am (isn’t she such a good planner? Ready for any and all contingencies!). Still, diligently, she kicked it that last mile and was home in record time and showered and ready by a little after 8.  But no one was there—not even those requesting an ETD of 8am. It was a bad omen.

I don’t have to continue down the path of that story. Basically, Responsible Self was let down hard. Regular Self mostly survived, though Responsible Self tried to take her down too.  So the moral of the story is, as usual, never ever plan ahead.

And here are a few other South Sudan moments, so that you can see that it’s basically worth it to live here even if planning doesn’t work in this climate:

Clockwise from top left: origami,shredded sugarcane,
happy mother with clean water from a new well,
fishing the soccer ball out of the trash pit, my once-blue sandals.

Since I’ve been back, my local urchin posse has been most excited to see me. I see their little heads pop up over my windowsill, expectant eyes wide and ready for adventure. Almost inevitably this happens just when I have finally sat down to eat something.  Sometimes I kick them out but usually I go out and play for a bit because they are the urchiest urchins and it is really hard to resist them—this pack of kids that lives with a handful of their mothers, a tough matriarch of a grandma and an adorable tiny old great grandma. Their grandfather sits under the tree all day long listening to BBC news on the radio and perfecting his refined English. The various and sundry mostly nonexistent fathers are almost never around to take any notice of anyone or provide any sort of noteworthy contribution towards their lives. There are plenty of fathers like that around here, but I’m choosing to put in a photo of Repent cuddling his boys, whom he has missed while they have been staying at their grandma’s house since Christmas because—she makes the best food. Of course.

Because they are the best, even if this photo is not.
And Repent loves his babies.

The urchins and I do lots of origami and make paper airplanes and also play a lot of soccer. Once we kicked the ball into the trash pit/bathroom hole and we dug it out with a long bamboo pole to which I duct-taped an old plastic bag. It took us 30 minutes of fishing, but we got it back. And we don't think about the festering germs it was soaking up down there because that's not fun. Our other activities include me fixing sandals with safety pins and me trading candy canes for sweet potatoes. I was also recently commissioned to make “Thank You” signs for our donors. I decided to delegate this task to my posse because they love coloring and also, if I made the signs by myself it would look like kids made them and so if I let them help me make them then kids actually DID make them, and it is more honest that way. But I did learn never EVER to leave them alone with the signs and the markers. I was baking a sweet potato cake and I popped out for 2 minutes. When I came back the sign looked like this:

Imagine it turned horizontally and held up by some cute kids.
Charming, right? Does spelling really matter? Letters are so pretty.

Of course, I didn’t notice anything until I handed the sign to the village to hold up for the donors and tried to read what I wrote. “That’s weird, “ I thought. “I don’t remember writing all the way to the edge of the paper. Also, why is there an ‘s’ at the end of ‘foundation’?” Then I figured it out and used the other sign which I didn’t like as much because Wani was a little too obsessed with the brown crayon but Oguna had used multiple colors on the other sign. Also—I had helped him color that sign, and I’m pretty sure I colored in the extra “H” that he added in there and had no idea because I am not the most observant of people.

But this week wasn’t a total bust. I got in some good hours on the back of the motorcycle which has given me the glow of someone who consistently goes to fry herself at the tanning salon without actually having to fry myself at the tanning salon. I even double suncreened and reapplied and everything (I put some on Ruben, Repent's youngest son, and he thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world). You know how all those magazines say that if you spend so much time in the sun, you will wrinkle up and look like you’re 50 by the time you’re 30? Well, I’m almost 31 and I currently have the complexion of a pubescent boy who hasn’t yet started shaving but will soon—that’s thanks to my pores constantly being clogged by sand, but anyway, maybe by the time I’m 50, I’ll actually look like I’m 50. I think that would be pretty cool. Looking one’s age is a very underrated quality, I think. Just look your age already, People—why not? It saves others lots of confusion. I would be glad to write a magazine article about that concept for anyone who is interested.

Many babies here scream in terror at my face (I get it, but it can be hurtful).
Baby Jenfer is one of the memorable ones who held our her arms and gave
the scary khawaja a big hug.  I will love her forever.

And that goes for the man who proposed marriage to me in the following conversation:

Potential Hubs: “Hey—where is your husband? Why don’t you marry me?”

Me: “I think you are too young for me. I’m old.”

P.H.: “No way—how old are you?”

Me: “31”

P.H.: “Well I’m 37!”

Me: “Or you’re a liar…”

P.H.’s friend: “Of course he is old enough—look at his beard!”

(Note: the little bit on fuzz on his chin might qualify him for Mundri’s premiere hipster club, but I don’t think it proves his manhood or advanced age.)

Me: “So how many wives do you already have?”

P.H.: “Just one. Come see how she lives. You will beg to marry me then.”

Me: “Um…no. I will be the only wife. I’m an American girl. It’s a thing with most of us [it was just not the time to talk about Mormons]. And also, it was the way God planned with Adam and Eve. There was none of this Adam and Eve and Ruta and Lusi and Mary. And also, you would not like the food that I cook.”

Note: that morning I had eaten nasi goreng for breakfast, which I made all by myself and ate straight out of the pan because if it’s OK for bachelors, it is also OK for bachelorettes, and I have no running water in my house right now so I’m cutting down on unnecessary luxury tasks like washing dishes and cleaning the bathroom floor. My nasi goreng involves lots of sheta/cabe/hot pepper and people here just can't take it usually.

Then I proceeded to successfully extricate myself from the conversation, telling them that if they wanted my phone number, they would have to ask Repent for it. And while he is a really nice guy who would probably just give it to them because why not? But he is also kind of a big dude, and he was farther away so they couldn’t see that he is always smiling. They didn’t follow me.

And so it goes. Another partially successful week concluded. And when one of the drillers tried to comfort me with a “This is Africa—nothing happens like you plan!” I got huffy and defensive for Asia and said, “It’s not ONLY Africa that messes up your plans, you know. Asia can do that too. It’s not always all about Africa. Africa ALWAYS tries to steal Asia’s thunder. And anyway Indonesians even have a saying for events not starting on time. It’s called jam karet, or rubber time. There aren’t any sayings like that here.” And he thought that was the greatest thing he ever heard and carefully wrote down “jam karet” into his little notebook so that he can remember it forever and have something important to talk about with all the Indonesian people he meets out here.  

And Responsible Self found herself cheered up by being able to teach some bahasa to a true lover of Asian culture and language.  And she has not developed an actual plan for next week beyond her usual stand-by—“Let’s wing it.”

And by the time I actually get internet good enough to post this on the blog, I will have been winging it for several weeks probably. Yeah…this is the life. Own it, Irresponsible Me.

One more because seriously--that face is too cute.(Ruben's face, not the dirt-covered white photo-bomber in the side).